


Last Dance

by Nickidemus



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:24:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nickidemus/pseuds/Nickidemus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one way to dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Dance

Sayid spent most of his time simply trying to make Shannon smile when they were together. She didn’t do much of that. When she did manage it, it was some sour, pinched thing meant to be sarcastic and usually preceding a biting remark. Her genuine smiles were much prettier. Usually he accomplished this with something sweet or absurd, and he went for absurd this time.

It had been harder to get her to respond since Boone had died. He’d given her space and comfort alike, trying to gauge which it was she wanted or needed. Now he was simply trying to be close, the two of them side-by-side in her shelter as night came upon them. He smiled at the way she stroked Vincent’s head where he lay beside her, as if she didn’t even notice she was doing it.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked her seemingly from nowhere.

Shannon glanced up, then looked at him fully. “Without music,” she said simply as if she found him ridiculous.

“One doesn’t need music to dance,” he said as if chastising her.

Shannon nodded, then glanced over at Vincent while she spoke. “I don’t like to, you know… Talk about ‘then’. But I used to dance.”

Sayid’s eyebrows climbed up his dark forehead as he regarded her. “And I suppose you were beautiful at it. With your.. build. Your legs.”

That did get a grin, mostly from his tone, and she smirked at him. But the look fled at what she said next. “It didn’t work out.”

Sayid’s face fell slowly. “I’m sorry.”

Shannon nodded. “No one else was,” she murmured.

He cupped her jaw and drew her attention gently to him again. “It won’t be the last time you dance,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’ll be given a reason to do it again, opportunity.”

She nodded, but he could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe him. He kissed her, as if through contact he could instill some strength in her. For a moment, it seemed to have worked, because her body turned to him and her hands were squeezing his arms in her pale, slender fingers.

She heard the jangle of Vincent’s leash as he got up and shuffled away from them, as if the animal sensed his presence wasn’t welcome at the moment. Then she broke away to look after him with something bordering panic. “Vincent!?”

“He’s fine,” Sayid insisted quickly. “His leash is tied down, remember?”

She settled a bit, and Sayid found himself feeling ever more tender toward her, at how prone she was now to expect the worst, how fragile she’d become after seeming so distant and untouchable.

“I have you,” he told her. “I’m here.”

Shannon’s face changed to something confused yet touched, wondering at how he said the right things every time. It seemed he did so without even needing to know, as if he saw inside her. She thought of every schmuck she’d ever played, everyone she’d used, wielding sex like a weapon. And suddenly it felt like such a damn waste in the wake of someone like Sayid, leaving her unable to discern how she should act, afraid she’d run him off, hurt him, do what she always did.

“Will you make love to me?” she asked him. Then smirked in spite of herself. “Dance with me?”

Sayid smiled himself then. “Of course.”

It was a slow sweet joining, full of passion but not a loss of control. Sayid was gentle, careful, with himself as much as her. Shannon never cried during sex. She had always thought that a very lame idea, weak. But in this case, she started to understand it, when her body surged into his, when he entered her for the first time and a dam broke behind her eyes. He noted this and offered to stop, but that’s not why she was crying. She was crying because she needed more, always would.

They finished and lay together with her long limbs tangled about him, his lips kissing worriedly at her damp face. But Shannon, for once, could attest to the fact that her tears were misleading. She was happy. If only for a moment.


End file.
